10: Surveys

Surveys can be submitted many ways including by mail, over the phone, and over the Internet.

Typically a corporation has a question on the survey. There are two distinct parts to the response: a set of structured checked boxes and a place for a written comment. The set of boxes are arranged in a classical form of structured data and the written responses are a typical form of unstructured data, as seen in Fig 10.1.

The classical form of a response to a survey is very common. But the problem with this very common structure is that the survey assumes it knows what is on the mind of the respondent in constructing the set of boxes. Instead the comments portion of the survey response is where the respondent can tell what really is on the mind of the respondent.